A Secret to Die For (Secret McQueen) (21 page)

Within my mind the command again was
Burn
.

Holden released me, and I braked the bike, bracing my feet on the ground. Ahead of me Desmond had stopped, and he and Sutherland had turned to watch me. The invisible tether in my mind sparked like the fuse on a bomb. My feel for it switched from blue to red, and in less time than it took me to say
Three
, the bodies were going up like pyres. I was reminded of a barbeque being lit with all the
fwoosh
sounds sparking to life around me, and with each one a new body was engulfed.

“Jesus fuck,” Desmond said, raising his hand against the wave of heat that washed out towards us.

Holden almost fell off the back of the bike but managed to regain his balance.

Soon the heat from all the burning bodies stung our faces, but I was immobile, my hands lifted to the sky and my skin tingling with the sensation. I was like a revivalist preacher, only instead of screaming about the threat of brimstone raining down on my flock, I was the one lighting fires.

The bodies continued to go up in smoke one after the other,
fwoosh, fwoosh, fwoosh,
until we were surrounded by a new sun, one of my own creation, and the light was so bright I couldn’t look directly at it. I was grateful I hadn’t targeted all of them. If I’d lit the nearby fallen bodies, the bikes might have gone up in smoke.

As the bodies fell in their place, transformed from columns of ash into nothing but dust on the wind, we found ourselves in the middle of an empty street. The cars around us were untouched. Nothing else had been burned.

Desmond came to his senses first. He glanced around at the destruction—or more accurately at the absence of it. I hadn’t left a single walking body. The only thing that remained were the few corpses fallen nearby, and none of them were in our path.

I’d done it.

“Secret, what happened to you?”

“I don’t know if now is the best time to talk about it. We’re almost back at the hotel, let’s—”

From down the block came the unmistakable sound of crackling glass.

We all looked up in time to see the shiny black tower of Rain Hotel ripple, then the glass exploded outwards, showering down on the street below. The wave of hot air hit us a moment later, and I was pushed back against Holden, who kept me upright. When we turned our gazes back to the hotel, the top stories were all engulfed in flame.

I wasn’t the only one playing with fire tonight.

Chapter Thirty

My pyrotechnic display had nothing on the mayhem now laid out before us.

“
Go,
” I screamed at Desmond, grabbing the bike’s handles and opening up the throttle, thankful I’d only stopped it and hadn’t turned it off.

Logic told me I ought to get the hell away from the explosion as fast as possible. But raw emotion reminded me all my friends were meant to be meeting us at the hotel, and some or all of them might have been there when things blew.

I sped past Desmond, who was still working to start his engine again, and flew down the block. Holden clung to me, his fingers digging into my ribs as he maintained his hold. Within seconds we were in front of the hotel. A few straggling dead who hadn’t been caught by my incendiary attack or by the explosion were wandering around, but not enough to pose a problem.

The glass doors of the hotel had been blown to pieces, but the lobby itself was free of fire. “Dad, stay out here.” I shut off the bike and let it drop, running towards the building as a wave of heat rolled out, making me take a few steps back.

“Genie?” I called out. “Cedes?”

First there was nothing, then a small, “Secret?” The feminine voice could have belonged to any of my friends, but a twinge in my guts tugged me forwards, drawing me along with a leash of fear.
Genie.
I assumed the worst, that my sister was trapped beneath a pile of rubble and burned debris.

“Genie? Where are you?”

Against all common sense and any of my better judgment, I ran headlong into the building. Pieces of the walls were coming down. The edifices had all been constructed from polished obsidian to give the lobby a sleek, black finish. Now with the added heat and the force of the explosion, the wall panels were cracking and falling in on themselves in large, sharp chunks.

I narrowly avoided one of the smoky quartz chandeliers falling from the ceiling and landing in a ragged heap next to me with a cacophonous jangle.

“Secret, help.” The voice rang out again from behind one of the concierge desks, and I vaulted the counter. Huge pieces of the walls and a rafter beam had come down, burying someone beneath them.

I grabbed the beam and pulled, but even with my substantial strength, the reinforced steel wasn’t budging.

Move,
I pleaded desperately, yanking at the metal with all my might.

My tingling fingers were sticky, like they were attached to the metal, and with one strong tug the bar lifted up and I was able to toss it over the counter like it weighed nothing.

The wall bits were considerably less heavy, and I was able to get them off without much fight, revealing not Genie, but Mercedes curled into a ball on the floor. There was a large gash on her forehead, and her black hair was matted with blood. My stomach lurched at the sight, terrified I might have come too late.

Losing more friends was
not
part of the bargain I’d made. What good were these powers and the promise of my death if I couldn’t help the people I cared about the most?

“Cedes, are you okay?” I hauled her up to her feet, cupping her face and turning it gently for a better look at the wound. She was pale and her hair was dusted with ash, making her look like a ghostly version of her former self. Her eyes were clear, though, and in spite of the fear I saw there, I didn’t see a reason to worry about her. I let out a sigh of relief. Desmond and Holden had come into the lobby but stood back, seeing I didn’t need help anymore.

“We thought… You’re late. We thought something had happened to you.”

“Where is everyone else?” The lobby looked otherwise empty.

“A few people went out to check for you, but Genie went upstairs. She thought you might have gone back to the penthouse. She was…”

“When? When did she go?”

“She just got into the elevator maybe a minute or two before the explosion. I don’t…” Her voice drifted off, unable to complete the unpleasant thought forming in both our minds.

If Genie had still been in the elevator when everything exploded, there was a very real possibility she was dead.

My stomach clenched, and bile rose in my throat. I refused to believe it. I wouldn’t allow anyone else to die tonight. I didn’t care how unrealistic my hope was, I
couldn’t
accept Genie being dead.

“Did you hear the elevator fall?” I was already glancing at the bank of double doors, none of which looked badly damaged. But if the elevator had gone down, it would have plummeted straight to the basement.

“No. But I didn’t hear a hell of a lot after the ceiling came down.”

“Stay with her,” I instructed Desmond as I climbed back over the counter. I paused for a moment, looking at them. I should stay here and protect them, but I couldn’t give up if Genie was upstairs somewhere. I memorized what Desmond and Cedes looked like, promising myself there would still be an opportunity to say goodbye properly. “Holden, can you see if anyone else is nearby? Let them know we’re back and what happened.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to find Genie.”

From the lobby doors came another female voice, this one less welcome. “Lucas said he was heading up there too, before we all went looking.” Morgan appeared stricken. Evidently even banishment to Siberia had done nothing to diminish her feelings for the wolf king. “I’m coming with you.”

The last person on earth I wanted to have by my side while I searched for Genie was Morgan. But I also didn’t feel like wasting time and energy arguing about it. “Just stay the fuck out of my way.”

I led the way to the stairwell doors, since the elevators were clearly no longer an option. The building had eighty floors, and I had no idea how we were going to figure out where the elevators had stopped.

“If we divvy up the floors, we can check the elevator bays individually,” Morgan suggested. “It’s pretty quick to get from the stairs to each bank of elevators. If I do the odd floors and you do the even, it’ll cut our search time in half.”

Well, goddamn if she wasn’t proving herself to be useful already.

I muttered my acceptance under my breath before adding, “Be careful, okay? The building isn’t going to stay standing forever. We need to do this fast and get the hell out of here.”

“I wasn’t planning to move in.” She sneered and pulled a gun from her duffel bag. I briefly feared she might shoot me right then and there, but she grabbed the door and held it open.

The great bonus of Morgan’s plan was that it meant neither of us needed to help the other, and like she’d said, I now only had to check half as many floors. The first ten I checked yielded nothing except burning ruins, and I was beginning to get disheartened. If I didn’t find the elevator soon, I wouldn’t be able to continue the search. The halls had already begun to fill with smoke, and as I made the run from stairwell to stairwell, passing the bank of elevators on each floor as I went, the smoke was starting to follow me.

On the twentieth floor, I hit pay dirt. One of the elevator doors had been forced open, either by the pressure of the blast or someone prying it apart. I managed to get it open wider, expecting to find the elevator behind it, but instead the black abyss of the elevator shaft was all that waited for me, its maw open wide, ready to gobble me up if I took one wrong step.

The cables groaned dramatically, and I glanced up.

The elevator car was just above my head.

“
Genie.
” I wasn’t sure she’d be able to hear me, but I hoped like hell if she could, it might give her some hope.

The elevator was stuck between the twenty-first and twenty-second floors, but if the doors on the twenty-first floor weren’t bowed in, Morgan might not notice.

“Genie, I’m coming.”

My panic-driven motivation blotted out logic. I
should
have gone to the stairs and run up one floor like a normal person. Instead I stepped out onto the elevator ledge and scanned the surrounding area for footholds. I was reaching for the cable when two strong hands grabbed me around my waist and hauled me back into the hallway.

I flailed, throwing my elbows back to make contact, and managed to thrust my arm hard against something bony.

“Fuck.”

I was quickly released, and I spun around to face whoever had gotten hold of me.

“Lucas? What the hell were you thinking?”

“What was
I
thinking? I was stopping you from falling twenty floors to your death. What were
you
thinking, climbing out there like that?”

“Genie’s stuck in the elevator, and I’m not sure how long it’s going to hold.” I said all this without a pause for breath, my words tumbling out one after the other in a messy, incomprehensible sentence.

“You’re not much good to her if you try to climb up from the bottom.” He took hold of my hand, and this time I didn’t pull away. We ran towards the stairs, and he led the way up to the twenty-first floor.

Morgan was lying on her belly in front of one of the elevators, the doors barely open. She was speaking, but I couldn’t make out the words.

“Is she in there?” I skidded up beside her, dropping onto the floor so I could see what had drawn her focus. The main brass doors had been pried apart about a foot, and the interior elevator doors were open maybe twice as wide.

Genie was sitting in the corner of the car, her head tucked between her knees and her arms wrapped over herself. She was shaking so hard I could hear the tremors against the walls of the elevator.

“Can we get these open any wider?” I tugged at the heavy door, but Morgan grabbed my hand to stop me.

“See the way it’s bowing out at the top?” Following her gaze, I noted the obvious structural damage the door had encountered, the brass tops of the doors angled in steeply. “I’m worried the car is tipped in. If we open the doors any wider, it might fall.”

I released the door immediately and got my face as close to the gap as I dared, not wanting to risk shearing it off if the elevator were to suddenly fall. Did I have magic in my new arsenal for this? I could burn up a thousand corpses like they were candles on a cake, and I could lift impossibly heavy objects. There had to be a use for Aubrey’s skills here.

“Genie, can you hear me?” I was worried she was so deep into a state of shock she wouldn’t be able to move. I had no idea whether or not the elevator could support the weight of two people, and if I had to climb in after her, there was no guarantee either of us was going to make it out again. “Genie, baby, I need you to look at me.”

Her whole body gave a shudder, and she let out a small, petrified mewl, but she lifted her head. “S-S-Secret?”

I’d never seen her more scared. When I’d first met her, she, along with my ancient great-grandmother, helped to save me from a pack of feral werewolves hoping to turn me into a breeding machine. Even then, with the
Loups-Garous
hot on our tails, she had been fearless.

Letting her stay here with me had been a mistake. I should have made her turn the car back around and hightail it out of New York at the first sign of trouble.

The problem was, I saw a lot of myself in Genie. She was a sweeter, better version of me, but there were other similarities. If I’d told her to leave, she would have stayed anyway, putting herself at even greater risk. And if I’d left her behind during the raids, she would have been in this position anyway. Albeit much higher up in the building, and possibly worse off for it.

“Hi, hon.” I tried to keep my voice soothing and in control, but it was hard not to lose my shit when my baby sister might plummet to her death at any moment. Lucas had gone to the elevator two doors down and was gingerly working to pry the doors apart while keeping a careful eye on us. I knew if anything were to jostle or move, he would stop in a heartbeat, but I was still nervous.

“Are you g-going to h-help me?”

My heart broke that she even had to ask. Did she think I was here to watch her die?

“Of course. Of course I’m here to help you. I wouldn’t leave you behind.”

“We got them,” she whispered. “We got our guy.”

I hadn’t been thinking about what had happened with the other teams. Since arriving at the hotel and seeing the state it was in, my primary focus had been making sure everyone was alive and relatively well. But I’d known they had to have done some damage, considering all the dead corpses in the street.

“I knew you would. You’re my tough, badass sister. If anyone could kill a necromancer, it would be you.”

While trying to keep her calm, I was racking my brain for ideas of how to use Aubrey’s power. It seemed to function on a very simplistic basis, at least for me. Think of something and make it happen. I could will the most basic concepts into existence. If I wanted fire, something burned. If I wanted strength, I was strong. But how could I conceptualize saving a life? And if I couldn’t do it for Genie, how could I try to bring Keaty back from the dead?

“Do you think you can stand up?”

She glanced at the rubble on the floor, and her eyes welled up, the trembling starting anew. “I-I-I-I—” She couldn’t get past that one vowel. Releasing her knees, she attempted to push herself up off the floor, but she was shaking so badly I feared the vibrations might be enough to send the whole car falling.

“Sweetie, I need you to calm down. Can you do that for me?” Asking the impossible was something I had mastered of myself, but to demand it from others seemed cruel. “You need to take a deep breath.”

Genie tried, but it sounded like she was breathing through the back of a fan. This would never work if she didn’t relax.

And there it was. My answer.

I might not be able to save her with a thought, but I was betting I could mellow her out. Aubrey had been able to manipulate Holden and me with almost no effort at all. He’d seized all of Desmond’s control in a matter of moments. If he could do all that, surely I could make Genie breathe a little easier.

Calm.
I projected it at her like a mental weapon.

A final shudder rocked her, and she closed her eyes, letting her head thump against the back of the car.